Analysis of Ways of Seeing

In four groundbreaking episodes, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing traversed several centuries of European painting history in an attempt to challenge the traditional conceptions of artistic meaning, expression, and value.  While the majority of the episodes focus on detailed Renaissance-era paintings, Berger’s ideas are hardly archaic.  He challenges the common notion that art is inherently valuable regardless of when, or how, it is viewed.  Berger asserts that while art can portray numerous ideas and meanings, ultimately, it has lost its original intended meaning.  The greatest cause of this reduction in artistic meaning is a seemingly unlikely culprit, the camera.

While used for a plethora of purposes, many of which carry artistic implications of their own, the camera ultimately has a greater affect on the art that came before it, than the art that has come after it.  The ability of the camera to instantly copy an image, mass produce it, and transport it around the globe in a matter of seconds has, in Berger’s view, degraded the beauty, meaning, and value of said images.  As technology continues to progress, the process of artistic replication increases in scale, and does so at a more rapid pace.  Television, a direct offspring of the camera, now allows millions of people to view the same image at exactly the same time.  This happens regardless of their physical proximity to the other viewers, and to the original image itself.  The benefits of such technology are obvious; increased knowledge, awareness of certain events, and the ability of people around the world to share their common interest in art.  But the reproduction of artistic works has one detrimental effect.  Artwork, especially Renaissance paintings, is created with specific attention towards the manner, and the physical location, in which it will be viewed.  To exemplify this, Berger demonstrates how the iconoclastic paintings inside of religious temples acted as a way of recording the “memory” of the building.  These paintings could only be viewed within the context of the sacred building in which they were displayed.  This added a certain reverent connotation to each painting, and they became a respected, even integral, part of the religious experience.

There was a point in history, when the entirety of Vincent van Gogh’s artwork could be viewed in only one location. Now, getting your hands on a copy of Starry Night, or any of van Gogh’s lesser-known work, is only a click away.   It can be purchased at countless museums, seen on television, or viewed online whenever a consumer desires.  Of course, there still remains only one original painting, but replications of this famous piece are readily available in a variety of formats, textures, and locations.  This means that what is arguably the most famous painting in the world is rarely viewed by two people in an identical context.  This, Berger laments, is because “perspective centers everything on the eyes of the beholder”.

Until relatively recently, human perspective has always been limited to what the eye could view at a single moment in time.  With the advent of cameras, television, and video, humans can now see, view, and hear things that took place at a different time.  Perspective is no longer confined to time.  Paintings are no longer confined to a single physical location.  This causes distortion in the perspective of the viewer.  Now seen in a new context, perhaps accompanied in a book by text and advertisements, paintings carry a different meaning.   They have been distorted by their surroundings.  Sometimes this amplifies certain aspects of the painting, but often it nullifies its original message.

Berger is not solely obsessed with the concept of art reproduction.  His insight into artistic perspective branch off from the general to the very specific.  He delves into complex discussions of specific aspects of Renaissance oil paintings.  He continues his discussion of perspective, by introducing nude paintings as an example of how perspective is often deceiving.  Initially, paintings of females in the nude appear to be pictures of women in their most natural form.  But Berger argues that nudity itself is another mask beneath which humans can hide.  He asserts that being nude is “to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized by oneself”.  Nude artwork revealed a male dominated culture in which women’s sexuality was pacified so that the sexuality of the male viewer would appear larger in contrast. Nude artwork demonstrated the sexual structure of European society, and juxtaposed the supposed innocence of being naked with the true intentions of the painters, which were often selfish and sexual.

Ultimately, Berger finds that even the expert commentaries of art historians can muddle the meaning of a work.  This affects the ability of the viewer to appreciate the work in his own context.  The context of the critic is forced upon the viewer. The viewer’s thoughts and emotions are cancelled out by the perspective of the critic.  Berger found that even young children are able to recognize complex details in a painting, and the aid of a trained art historian is unnecessary.  But still, this same critic can lend valuable insight towards a painting.  Information about the painter’s lifestyle, income, sexuality, childhood, and death can all enhance a viewer’s appreciation of art.  Berger is not blind to these benefits. He admits an ambivalent stance towards the way perspective is being radically changed by new technology.  He best summarizes this view when he observes that, “the camera, by making a work of art transmittable, has multiplied its  possible meanings, and destroyed its unique original meaning.  Have works of arts gained anything from this?  They have both lost and gained”.

Looking vs. Seeing Art

         Art can be the expressway of one’s feelings through a canvas or the reciprocal image of what one may see from their vantage point reproduced. One individual’s viewpoint on art may vary vastly from another. However, no matter what one person may take from an artwork, art can be accepted as a universal language. Art allows people with different ideologies to strike up common ground when discussing their respective takes on something.

Two individuals who had contrasting viewpoints as to what constitutes an artwork were John Berger and Alice Elizabeth Chase. In both of their respective books, John Berger and Alice Elizabeth Chase emphasized the point that the first way in which an individual understands art is through looking. We see then we use words to describe what is present. However, the two differed in their views as to how the invention of the camera came to affect art as well as what makes an artwork unique.

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger was completely anti-camera in the sense that it took away the uniqueness of an original work. He felt as though the camera isolated “momentary appearances” and thereby rendered away an artwork’s true meaning. The camera enabled artworks to be taken out of the place it used to reside and where the work’s original meaning was best conveyed. People no longer traveled to works of art with high frequency when it become possible for it to come to them.

For example, since paintings were allowed to appear simultaneously on people’s television, depending on the area around the television, two different meanings could be derived. If a family saw an image of a flame on their TV and their house was cold; this image could mean heat and warmth. On the contrary, if a painting of a flame appeared on the TV in a family’s house that was already warm and very religious, such an image could remind them of hell and how people burn for their unrepented acts of immorality.

Berger essentially constituted art as being a work of authenticity. He emphasized on the importance of the little details such as the people and their expressions being paramount. When describing the difference between naked and nude, Berger didn’t focus on describing the background. Rather that in a nude artwork, there is a female on display, bearing herself and the hairs on her body with her attention directed at the viewer.

On the other hand, in Looking at Art, Alice Elizabeth Chase reasoned that the camera didn’t take away from the original image; rather, it conveyed exactly the way things look. She reasoned it was easier for a camera to capture a view as compared to an artist who has to map out a way to illustrate the wide and distant elements from a given point of view since in a landscape everything isn’t necessarily on the same plane.

With a landscape, Alice Elizabeth Chase found that it was one of the most important subjects in art in its ability to reflect the moods of man and the infinity of God. For example, as described in the third chapter of her book, although the event of the Baptism of Christ is only incident of the forefront of the image as stated, such didn’t lessen the importance of the landscape in the backdrop. Through the landscape, one is able to see the presence of God through the nature in which he help made just as much as one is able to see Him through his son’s baptism.

Conversely, although photography has it pitfalls as stated in the fourth chapter of Looking At Art because certain elements can be blocked out by another one present in the view. Chase doesn’t look at this as a way to denounce photography but as a way to show how artists have more of an advantage in producing images in the way that they can use lighter and darker shades to contrast different objects. Then, to contrast different perspectives, they can simply make things increase in magnitude as the object comes towards the viewer.

In essence, Berger took the perspective of how a viewer of art would see something. Chase took the perspective of how an artist would look at something then reciprocate it. As a result, they each garnered different takes on different artistic elements not because they necessarily define art as two separate entities. Rather, both Chase and Berger just examine it from two opposite perspectives.

Andrew Zagelbaum

Professor Graff

The Arts in New York City

September 19^th 2012

Through Ways of Seeing, John Berger uses art to portray his inner thoughts and opinions of his surrounding world.  My take on the title of the book is that there is, in fact, multiple ways of seeing.  Yes, there’s the typical, using your vision to see what is directly happening in front of you, but there’s also so much more than that.  Art allows us to see not only what’s happening, but also what has already happened, or what will happen.  Art is both fiction and non-fiction.  We can see facts and true events, but you can also see opinions and feelings.  Only through art can you physically experience what another person may be thinking without being with that person.

In Ways of Seeing, you will find a chapter that consists of only pictures of women.  The first one, being a woman standing in a kitchen full of pots and pans.  This, I assume, is supposed to represent the over exaggerated view on what women are.  In the background of this, you can see pictures of other women who look to be more well off than the woman cooking, but it is assumed that the woman in the picture is a representation of most of the female population.

Next you’ll find a woman of class sitting in a car surrounded by people.  This picture, to me, represents the potential of a woman.  Where as in the last picture you see an average woman surrounded by those better off than her, here you can find a high end woman surrounded by those beneath her.  Just outside her car window, you can see two women just waiting to catch a glimpse of her.

Moving forward, we find two naked women with a very plastic sense to them.  I’m still unsure whether these women are real or mannequins, but regardless, this picture shows the potential beauty of an artist.  Behind the two women, a figure can be seen and while it is unclear what he/she may be doing, it seems as though he/she is painting something.  Perhaps he/she is trying to capture the beauty of these two women and represent it in a picture of his/her own.

Later, we have a woman in an exquisite dress, capturing the eyes of three high class men.  Here, we see not only the potential beauty of a woman, but the power behind this beauty that she holds.  Three men are distracted by the figure that lay in front of them, and yet this contradicts the first picture we explored.  The woman is no longer a figure of work and labor, but now she is above the men, capturing every last piece of their attention.

Lastly, we have two pictures of women side by side.  One of which is standing the rain, while the other sit there having her feet pampered.  To me, this shows two extremes of a female presence.  While in the first picture, we see a very natural, rough portrayal of a woman; the second picture shows us a woman beyond the elements.  Both are clearly beautiful women, but for different reasons.  In regard to the woman in the rain, she has natural beauty.  She can be seen as a self made woman, one who reaches a certain potential without the help of others.  The other woman, however, can be seen as a woman coming from riches.  The beauty she holds is more of a clean look.

Through out these various pictures, we were able to both compare and contrast different women in what they represent.  Without physically seeing these women in person, we were able to have a grasp on what their life styles are like.